This would be another ‘can I save my files because my computer crashed’ topic.
Issue:
Brand new HP laptop died. Turn on computer, light s light up, blank black screen. Pulled the hard out and put in external enclosure and was able to see the contents of the hard drive except for personal documents (which may have been protected by Vista password?) when connected to another computer. Enter my lack of cpu knowledge…I went with the idea that if I could see my files this way, if I popped the hard drive into another computer and ran it, I could load vista and access everything.
Thus, I put the hard drive in another laptop and turned on the cpu. Vista began to load, and brought up start up repair. After analyzing the the computer, the repair program decided that it could not fix the problem. I didn’t have admin rights on the new computer, so I could not try to do a system restore.
Bringing me to my actual question: Now when the hard drive is in the external enclosure, the only file that shows up is Restore. Are my files lost, can I still recover them? Did I screw myself over trusting the new computer.
Any help would be appreciated (and I apologized for my longwindedness).
